Kesher Talk

Moran spins to high-school students. One of Kesher Talk's readers, Russell, informs me that Congressman Jim Moron - sorry, Moran - spoke to a group of high school students on C-SPAN last week. The relevant part of Russell's email:

. . . where he places the blame for the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Israel, occurs about :43 minutes into the interview. A young woman asks him about issues that are important to him that may not be of the same importance to his constituents (at least that's the way I interpreted the question) and he responds (and I'm paraphrasing) that he feels he's blessed with having a district that generally thinks along the lines that he does, though there are some issues where he thinks he's "gotten a little bit ahead" of his constituents, such as foreign affairs, and it becomes very difficult to explain his positions.

He suggests the Middle East is one of those, and that his expertise on this issue comes from the fact that he's traveled over there many times and talked with many people. Accordingly, he suggests that it's the Likud government, which is "destroying homes and destroying infrastructure of the Palestinian authority," that is standing in the way of peace. He goes on to say the only solution is a two state system where the Palestinians have their own state that they can run themselves, along with protected borders for Israelis, but that "the settlements are a real problem."

He goes on to say that on this issue, he's voted in ways that have gotten him in trouble politically, but he thinks in the long run his views are the only ones that will secure real peace for the Israeli people, and that that conflict has to be resolved if U.S. objectives in the Middle East are going to be achieved, enabling democracy and the rise of economic middle class in the Middle East that will suppress young people from turning to terrorism. . . . nothing about what the Palestinians or the Arab states should do toward achieving peace was mentioned in reference to this point.

on his remarks earlier in the year:

Earlier in the program (about :14 into the presentation) he's asked about his leadership style, and he says he uses town hall meetings, such as the one earlier this year in Reston, VA, where he made remarks that "were taken out of context," misinterpreted, and used in a way he didn't mean. He says those remarks were directed toward (what he says was) an anti-war audience present at the meeting, and what he meant in those remarks was that any individual should work through whatever larger group they belong to in order to maximize their voice, as the group would have greater influence. Examples of such groups, according to Moran, would be the three major religions in the U.S., and he recalled trying to make the same point previously when he suggested, also controversially, that if Catholic priests spent "as much effort talking about unnecessary war as they do about abortion" it might change the course of public opinion. He admitted he didn't know if this was true, and that it was an exaggerated position, but, since the "lady" asking the question was Jewish, he used the same expression about "the Jewish American community, at least its leadership," and that was the point that was misinterpreted, and turned into a controversy.

I thought at one point he was going to say his remarks were hurtful, but what he said was that they were hurtful "in the way they were reported." Then (as if that wasn't bad enough) he tries yet another explanation, suggesting that he was trying to say that protest marches weren't as good a way to change public opinion as working through one's own organization or whatever group one belongs to, using the example that it was middle class America that turned around public opinion on the Vietnam war; then he quoted U.S. and Vietnamese casualty statistics for the Vietnam war.

on his re-election:

In the middle of the interview (around :30 or :35 into the interview) he was asked about a possible Democratic challenger to his seat in the next election, and he suggested that the more people in the race the better, as long as issues were discussed instead of personal attacks on a candidate's character.

Aren't you glad that's all cleared up now? [Bold emphasis mine - JW]

posted by Judith @ 5/08/2003 04:24:31 PM